A family at Chester Village, West Coast Berbice is disturbed that they would have to spend in excess of $500,000 to repair their three combine engines after persons tried to sabotage them recently.
Jagnanand Dunraj and his brother, Leakraj Dunraj told Stabroek News that the culprit threw “waste oil” mixed with sand into the engines and they feel that if they had not made the discovery early the engines would have been completely destroyed.
Leakraj said the engines had been removed from the three machines for servicing two Fridays ago and placed on a trailer. He feels that the damage was done on Tuesday night.
They had finished washing the combines on Wednesday and were about to start servicing the engines in the afternoon when they observed sand around the cover of one of the engines.
Upon checking, they were shocked to find out that all three of the engines were filled with sand. Leakraj opined that “whoever threw the sand and oil cleaned it out from two of the engines but they did not get to clean out the other one good and that is how we noticed it.”
He said it would have been difficult for them to detect that the engines had been tampered with and while in the process of working in the backdam the engines would have eventually been broken “to pieces.”
According to the Dunraj family, they would not have been the only ones to suffer from the machines not being in operation but over 30 farmers as well whose rice they were preparing to reap by next week. They were in the process of preparing the combines to start reaping by next week.
Leakraj pointed out that they had no problem with anyone and were wondering why someone would want to “spite” them like that. He said they made a report to the Weldaad and Fort Wellington Police Stations and ranks visited to conduct investigations but so far no arrests have been made.
